Jeff Who Lives at Home is a film with a theme of loss that is advertised as a comedy, criticized as being contrived, and given consistent high ratings because it was seen as inspiring.
Jeff is a conflicted 30 year old man who belies his anxieties with a laid back manner, his bulky body in loose athletic clothing, his face, still so boy like that one easily dismisses the intense absorbed look that makes Jeff seem not quite connected with the real world. He has a soft appearance that is likable, but lacks any suggestion of strength…despite a big muscular body.
He lives at home with his mother and is intensely occupied with finding his destiny.He is a reflective man, and tells us at the opening of the film, I can’t help but wonder about my destiny, my fate.
In the opening scene, jeff is standing
with his back to a blaring rv commercial on vitamins. and he is delivering a review on a movie called Signs that impressed him Signs is about aliens, but it is the title that intrigues him. Signs are what he needs to look for to find his destiny.
The phone rings and jars him out of his reverie ..he stumbles to answer it. Kevin? a male voice asks
No there is no Kevin here.
A little bumbling exchange…the caller realizes he has the wrong number ….but Jeff’s view is different. This is destiny calling… the caller asked for Kevin. Jeff has stated that he believes there is a reason for everything. The reason this phone rang is that a message has been give to Jeff that finding kevin will lead him to his destiny. The phone rings again. This must be the validation of that. He rushes to answer it.
He picks up the phone but remains silent in breathless anticipation. All is silent.
Then the woman on the other end of the connection says Jeff when you answer the phone you are supposed to say hello. She is irritated.
Mom, he says, surprised to hear her voice.
She wants to know what he is doing…and has he gone to get the wood glue to fix the broken shutter in the kitchen. She left him a note on the kitchen counter to do this task.
Jeff has not been up in the kitchen, doesn’t know what she is talking about. She is irritated with him. She tells him that if she comes home and finds the broken shuttered not fixed, he can find another place to live
But I’m in the middle of something he says to his mother.
They hang up…he goes to the kitchen, sees the note, looks at the broken shutter, and mournfully sets out for the bus stop to go to a store and get wood glue.
Now we leave our hero. The camera moves to .a rectangular,ugly brick apartment building with little windows in a commercial neighborhood, and goes into one of the apartments where a young wife is sitting at a breakfast table while her husband spoons strawberries and whipped cream onto a waffle for her pleasure….but she is decidedly not having pleasure from this attention…she looks at him with a look that tells us she is tired of his failure to know what pleases. He sits back, quite satisfied with his husbandly loving attention and starts to tell her of a beautiful Porsche he has been admiring. She doesn’t want to hear this, cuts him short to say we can’t afford it…in a tone that lets us know she can barely tolerate his insensitivity anymore.
He smiles broadly, trying to check his enthusiasm of the surprise he is about to reveal. He pulls car keys out of his pocket and dangles them and smiles at her as he tells her, I bought it. She is angry. He tells her she doesn’t have vision…which he definitely has. She says where is the car? Parked on the lot right under our window. She goes to the window . where she sees the gleaming white Porsche…she takes the waffle whipped cream, strawberries, opens the window and dumps them on the car…throws in a handy bottle of catsup for good measure.This mans name is Pat and his wife is Linda. He is Jeff’s older brother.
Jeff & Pats mother, Sharon, works in a tiny cubicle in a fairly large office.We never learn what is done in this office, but it all seems to be routine office work…and not creative or stimulating. she is a big eyed, tall bosomy woman,middle aged but still beautiful, very lonely, and disappointed in her sons. She has one friend, Carol.As she sadly looks on her life, we learn that her husband Tom died, and she is having trouble adjusting to life as a widow. She has a faint hope of finding another man.
Now we have the cast of characters… the mother.her husband, prematurely dead ….2 brothers…one looking for his destiny, and the other….loving the wife he thinks she is, and entirely blind to the one she really is …..all of them
coping with the loss of the father…Sharon looking for replacement love,Pat trying to make more secure his relationship with his wife which he correctly senses is fragile, and Jeff, unable to leave home, and desperately trying to replace the voice of the father for its guidance and wisdom. In the format of a contrived comedy, the film shows these struggles.
As Sharon reflects sadly on her life, a piece of paper folded like a child’s paper airplane floats down on her desk. Unfolded it reveals a drawing of a full blown beautiful flower. Shortly after a note appears on her computer screen saying the sender is an admirer. A dialogue develops. Sharon writes that it can’t be she that is admired as she is old and her body is getting lumpy. The sender disagrees.
Sharon asks how did you get my screen name? the sender says I work here. Sharon looks around the cubicles, sees a few men standing, and decides it is not them.
In a playful mood now, she suggests he go to the water cooler and meet her. She goes to the water cooler , but first she unbuttons the top button of her blouse, shoves her breasts up a bit, shakes back her hair (Saradon is a wonderful actress…there is no question in this pantomime of excitement and anticipation of sex again in her life) She waits at the water cooler, and soon a very dull looking, paunchy slow man comes up and takes a drink. She is animated, says hello. Hello, he says. She rushes on…that she loves flowers, and some other conversation about the meaning of flowers, and the surprise of the drawing. He looks at her flabbergasted, and says, I have no idea what you are talking about.
She runs away into a storage room, and cries. Minutes later, her friend carol comes into comfort her. As Carol puts her arm around her , and the long sleeve of her dress falls away where a tattoo of the identical flower from the paper plane is seen. Sharon looks at Carol with understanding, and with such a face of disappointment and anger that language is not needed
Carol says, look its not what you think it is.
Oh, yes, it is, Sharon states bitterly and leaves slamming the door.
Back on the bus, Jeff is so dreamy and lost in his thoughts, one can see wood glue has disappeared from his mind. He is startled out of this reverie however, as a young black athlete gets on the bus, wearing jeans and a tank style jersey that announces on the back, Kevin.
Jeff reads the shirt, and starts to focus and become alive when the boy pulls the cord and gets off the bus.
As the bus starts up again, Jeff decides he has received the sign initiated by the earlier phone call, yells at the bus driver to stop, jumps off the bus and starts in pursuit of the Kevin boy.
Kevin has disappeared into a convenience store to buy a drink. In goes Jeff, hiding from him from aisle to aisle while the Asian shopkeeper tries to understand what Jeff is looking for. His queries are greeted with a Shush which the the clerk doesn’t understand. Jeff bolts out the door as Kevin leaves and follows him to a playground where a group of muscular young men are playing basketball. Jeff sits at the side of the playing field to watch…a chunky white boy admiringly watching the muscular black athletes playing a vigorous game…so energetic indeed, that one of the players gets injured in a collision and has to be carried off the field. However this game is too vibrant to stop for that, so they push Jeff onto the field and he plays to help his new team to victory.
Kevin is all smiles….wants to know why Jeff is following him. He was very aware of this pursuit, and in a friendly manner says, I’m gonna put somethin in the air..wanna come? Jeff says I don’t know what you mean. Weed, man; I’m gonna smoke me some weed.
Jeff’s face lights up in a way we have not seen till now…and he happily ambles after Kevin, much in the manner of an enthusiastic puppy following his master who has a plate of meat scraps. As he blissfully lights up, the joy is extinguished because he is knocked out, beaten up..and when he comes to focus again he dejectedly starts to walk down the street.
Approaching a Hooters restaurant, he sees his brother, Pat,comes out of the restaurant apparently going towards a white Porsche. The brothers greet and Pat offers to drive his brother home. Along the way they pass the graveyard where their father is buried, and stop at his grave.
Jeff says I had a dream about Dad. He is asking me what is……stop, says Pat. I have the same dream and together they discuss the dream they share of their father asking his favorite question…what is the greatest day in the world. The boys don’t know the answer so he gives it. The greatest day in the history of the world is TODAY. And that becomes the 2nd theme of the movie…which is an account of just one day. Find what you need in what is offered TODAY. Actually not a bad message. The past and the future are not ours to use , but today is happening as we breathe and is our resource.
They get back in the car, and showing off the amazing Porsche, Pat loses control, and they crazily spin off the street, into someones yard and smash into a tree, and the Porsche is heavily damaged. This is the beginning of the comedic part of the movie, although the audience has been laughing all the way along (just not me)
Pat gives the angry homeowners a big sum of money not to call the police and they start again, but this time Pat spots his wife’s car in front of a restaurant, and she is seen through the window, evidently enjoying a conversation with a man with whom she appears to be having lunch. Pat becomes angry, frightened he will lose his wife, and needs to know more about this mystery. He sends the Kmart clad,bruised Jeff into the classy restaurant with orders to sit in the next booth and put the cell phone in a position to pick up the conversation. Jeff accomplishes this after offering the waitress money to overcome her reluctance to seat him at all.
As this goes on, a tow truck is lifting away the Porsche which is illegally parked. Pat sees it too late, and runs down the street after the tow truck, and ultimately Jeff comes out of the restaurant and starts running after Pat.After retrieving the car, Jeff spots yet another Kevin. It is a candy company named Kevin’s . the driver is unloading candy for candy machines wearing the logo Kevin on his cap. Naturally Jeff has to follow him. This candy is being delivered to a Hampton Inn and in the parking lot is Linda’s (Pats wife)car so he knows she is there with the man from lunch. After much hassle with the clerk they find the room and Pat decides his hulk of a brother can knock the door down. this is about to happen when the man, fully dressed and very mild and gentlemanly comes out to get some ice. Linda,comes out fully clothed also, which helps her statement that they are just having a meeting and she is aghast at seeing them there,
The movie ambles on in this fashion for a time.
Meanwhile Sharon back at the office has accepted that Carol is what life is going to offer her, accepts a kiss from Carol,and has become a laughing young girl at the prospect of a companion…maybe a lover, we don’t know. She confesses she is the mood to do something spontaneous, and she hasn’t been to New Orleans in 20 Years. {this movie takes place in Baton Rouge). So they head off to New Orleans. Linda is also on her way to New Orleans, and following her,some cars behind is Jeff and brother Pat.Pat is determined to get his wife back as she has angrily told him their marriage is over.
The traffic is stopped on a bridge…something has happened and for miles the cars are stopped in a big traffic jam. Overhead a helicopter appears. As Jeff stares at it, he realizes this helicopter is the sign he has been waiting for. He jumps from the car and starts running to the front of the line.
t A car had driven toff the highway into the river below. The car is almost not to be seen anymore, but there are two children in the water, crying. Without a moments hesitation, Jeff jumps into the river and rescues the girls with the help of a tugboat coming to rescue. The girls cry….our Daddy, our Daddy, and Jeff begins the heroic rescue of the drowning father. He saves his life but Jeff is going under.By this time Pat is up above checking out the problem. He sees his brother drowning, and he jumps in and carries him to a waiting boat..
The next scene, is on a coast guard boat with an unconscious Jeff being worked on by the medics…there is suspense and fear that he is lost. But no,he spits out an enormous amount of water, more and more and finally sits up. He is saved, and he has saved the father…the father of the little girls…but his fantasy of saving his father is complete. He met his destiny.
It is night now and it is Sharons birthday. They are in the kitchen and the camera shows us the shutters, all in a row…not a break..it has been fixed. Sharon blows out her candles with an ecstatic smile with Carol at her side,Pat has told Linda he just wants to be in love again with her..thats his only desire and it works, according to their smiles..the little girls on tv praise Jeff for saving their father and the audience applauds warmly.
the movie has been called quirky, poignant,deeper than other comedies, but the a ratings probably came because a marketable comedy addresses the universal themes of loss and childhood fantasies of magic. the same story could have been told in a tragic mode without the car chases and slapstick but it probably wouldn’t have sold as well.. Comedy and tragedy are opposite sides… when this nickel was tossed it came comic side up.
Selma Duckler
Jeff who lives at home
Directed by Jay and Mark Duplass
Jeff- Jason Segel
Pat- Ed Helms
Sharon–Susan Sarandon
Carol- Rae Dawn Chong
Linda-Judy Greer